Real Life

I am not myself these days. Failing to do much but ponder who I am and what I am doing. Stressful – that’s what it is. Self-existentialism is not a normal part of my selfish lifestyle. I want to be selfless – to be a better person. I’m trying to deny that you have any part in these desires because you are bad for me. You are selfish and fleeting and I see myself in you everyday. But you need my help, and I think that I need you too. We’re sort of cleaved together in this twisted, magnetic way. It’s messy and I don’t like it. It’s out of my control and I don’t like it.

Intertwined together I think about how I don’t know you at all. I think about how you don’t know me either. I think about how we’re friends. Yes, I am your friend.

I like to make coffee. I make it strong and bold – I imagine it is me. This rich, savory thing is me. And I drink it, and it is delicious. And you sit there – your fingers wrapped around my pretty mug and you drink it and you think it is delicious also. You tell me so. And the coffee is me and you don’t know. You add more sugar and I take it as a sign I could be nicer.

We sit on benches and stare at the sky and we laugh. We laugh so hard, so much. We philosophize about things that others would laugh at and you laugh at me because I am silly sometimes. You tell me I am weird and wonderful and I tell you that it's cold out. I can’t let myself release the reigns I hold so tightly. I hug you and hope you understand.

Satanic

Wind howled through the trees—gusts rushing like mustangs sprinting down the side of a mountain. It rushed up the road towards the stain-bricked, burned-out church where Old Man O’Reiley had met an unfortunate end. Red lights flashed on the “Church of Christ” sign like lightning in the desert—blinding and terror-inspiring. Had anyone else been around that night, they would have heard the screams rising above the siren as stern-faced paramedics wheeled the stretcher out of the crumbling structure. One putrefied hand dangled off the edge. The nails hung loosely from some fingers and vanished all together from others. The appendage had bloated to more than three times what a normal hand should look like. Flies swarmed around the body so ferociously that the paramedics continually removed their hands from their noses to swipe them away from their faces. Of the body, they took little care, hauling Mr. O’Reiley into the bad of the van with disgusted eyes and twisted mouths.

“I hate it when we get the squishy ones,” one man complained through the gaping window of the coroner’s truck.

In the morning, newspapers throughout the town square headlined “MAN FOUND DEAD IN LOCAL CHURCH.” Policemen surrounded the scene; photographers clicked feverishly at the perimeter of the atrocity surrounding the scene like children at the zoo. Inside the structure, bats roosted in the rafters using opague spider webs to cover their dwellings. The mosaic floor below the alter lay blotched with blood which stained the angel’s wings black and red—making the scene seem more like a romp from hell rather than joyful seraphim. Outside, the chaotic milieu continued outside the church christened with death, fire, blood, and curiosity. All humanity baffled at the scene.

I smiled up through the fire. Aren’t all churches built of the same?

Cemetery

There’s always a pale yellow light, from whatever is able to sneak through the trees. The air is stagnant, untouched by the wind that sometimes protests against the surrounding trees. But they’re strong, they keep the inside preserved like a beetle caught in an amber mold. There are no flowers. There’s nothing but kudzoo and weeds, cruel encroaching plants that blanket the hill and devour the headstones covering the already faded names. Nobody visits them anyway except the things that skuttle through the underbrush or the creatures that slip from the woods and up from the ground, far more terrifying than the souls of the bones that lie in the wooden boxes below.

On the ground little bits of amber sometimes break through what is not green or brown. Little bits of amber left by winos and hobos and delinquents of decades past who don’t remember the names on the stones anymore than anyone else. Digging into the ground, nails fill with dirt and turn the ruddy color of dried blood from the clay that lies beneath the brown. Out come bottles of different sizes, all thick and all dark amber. The dirt’s here too, inside, with sticks and webby clumps and the skulls of small rodents who made the unfortunate decision to slip inside only to trap themselves. Put the opening close to an eye and spin. The loose contents follow one another round and round, occasionally light by the sparse saffron light that’s able to evade the dirt covered interior, a kaleidoscope of decay. Not beautiful but horrifying.

Water can take care of that, forceful rushing water that wipes out the decay. The new bottles line the windowsill and turn to honey with the sunlight.

Delicate Structures

Saturation is full blown, signaling change. Edges recede back then, disease or weather wears on, small patches/holes appear and eventually breakaway happens to most. Fall in fall, grounds strewn with remains. Crunchy, veined paper.

Those blue lines that signal life, they weave their way throughout but are especially prominent on hands. Trace them with a finger, feel those tubes move side to side, gather some sense of vulnerability.

They sway when wind blows. Some are strong enough though their hands at a certain time may detach and relocate below. Perhaps the wind will take them too, gather them, scatter them, dance with them. That dance seems magical, wish it could be taken and kept inside. Like American Beauty and the plastic bag. Grasping that beauty is almost too much to contain.

At that final season, blue lines become more prominent against a crinkled and thinning surface. Perhaps it’s even crunchy, delicate and weak by appearance at least. Hold it, feel a personal history in its gnarled structure. There's warmth but fading, color but fading.

Those dead brown hands(maples most similar), they sit on the dresser among the rocks and shells. Each is held, noticed, and cherished. Dignity and splendor that few will notice emanating from those curling edges, those intricate fractals within, twirled by the stem and set lovingly down again.

The City

The sky was the color of sorrow that day—a soupy mixture of grey and melancholy that weighed the clouds down so you could almost reach out and touch them. But the city moved on, unfeeling. Unaware that the world was still revolving. The city moved on, unwelcoming. Filled with souls that were lost and searching for their own meanings, oblivious to the fact that at any moment the sky above might break open and pour down salty tears. Each soul with a face that told a story maybe no one wants to hear. But it’s easier that way—easier to walk briskly, eyes cast down, searching the sidewalks as though their futures might be found within the cracks.

If only that were so. If only answers truly were found in fortune cookies or sidewalk cracks. Then perhaps there wouldn’t be so many searching in all the wrong places for the answers to questions they can’t say out loud. If only answers truly were found in coffee grounds or horoscopes. Then maybe the sky wouldn’t mirror the feelings of so many hearts that day—heavy and unsure.

Blurred

Vision blurred. Maple-freckled stretch of arm around me, purrs like a kitten bathed by its mother, bathed by my tongue, rumbles like the heart of the earth. Our hearts. Heartbeat. Thump-a thump-a thump in my ear and I don’t have to put on music when we’re together. It’s the best music, the soft sounds and the demand of that magic pulling me forward, downward, where I need to be.

Our hips bear children, hold men, have purpose but no, no, we are not just straight lines ‘cause our lines blur and our hips, they curve, they are boats beat against the waves, they—are not—they are not—

Melting. It is all supposed to be softness and slickness but it is molten, the air is molten around us. Molted. Naked but not shivering, symphony of

There and

mm and

don’t stop.

Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop

Don’t. Stop.

This is not the beat of our music, these are not your maple-freckled arms pulling me back, grinding bruises against my shoulders so hard I feel the fingerprints in my bones, and

Don’t! Stop!

His words or mine, don’t know, just know the hand on my face is not your hand on my face, don’t pull my hair, don’t touch me, my hips are more than a goddamn holster and it’s not our ocean waves, motion waves, my ribs are exploding, world blossoms black

Don’t. Stop!

Your speech broken by sobbing, my nose feels broken, the floor is cold. Molted, not molten, and shivering now and I’m sorry I can’t save you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Vision blurred.

Bluegrass

The lingering scent of dew sprinkled along the mahogany logs. Each stacked carefully, perched on one another retaining the warmth. The shining white scarcely existed anymore from the night before; yellow beams of heaven took care of that. Pools of murky water dotted the bluegrass, invading what was left of the snowy world that had conquered last night. Everything creaked, the mighty oaks to the slender planks on the porch, burdened with the feudal war of ice and liquid. The quaint cabin stood firm, worn from the repetition of seasons and oppressive environment, it pronounced itself on the hilltop.

The abandoned playground stood as a monument next to the forest. They had bonded over the years now, the forest encroached on the playground and it willingly accepted. A swirling contrast of man and nature in harmony played out eagerly between them. A dash of green here, a peek of red, the taint of black rot, the virgin white, and the plethora of brown made their debut. Branches swayed in orchestra with its swing brethren, quite the performance to behold marionettes of our world forever moving and jostling their parts to make the show last.

In those moments, the moment of seconds, everything was in tune, in place: the cabin, the playground, the forest, the snow, and the water. Entropy was going exactly according to plan in this brightening world.

Voices

I can hear her. I can hear her screaming. I can hear her crying. I can hear her begging. She needs me, I think. Or maybe she needs somebody else. But she needs somebody, I know that. I can hear her. She needs help.

I can hear her, but I don’t know where she is. Her voice is too faint, too far away. It’s like a feather on the wind – how do I follow something I can’t find? I think I should start at the beginning…where did I first hear her?

It was yesterday, I heard her yesterday. Yesterday was Tuesday, it was very cold. I could see my breath, it was like smoke. No, it was smoke, I was smoking. What was I smoking? Was it still cold? I can’t remember. I heard her yesterday.

Yesterday, it was cold. I was wearing a coat, it was white, I was warm. So was it cold? So cold I couldn’t move, but I was warm. I can’t remember. She was there yesterday. Not there, but I could hear her. She must have been close. She’s following me, I can still hear her. Her voice is broken glass.

I think I know my own voice.

Habits

It's the compounding of noises that could drive you insane. Dronings of white noise, catching only a smidgen. Nature... only.. respond.... apathia. Whirring like a symphony, up and down, up and down. Like cicadas, or a siren. Like a jet ski engine, bucking, kicking, dulling the mind. And the clicking, incessant clicking. The bubbling of a coffee maker but not so pleasant--sputtering, spitting, forceful. It's more of a gnashing, mastication, Morse code. Looking gets you nowhere. Tainted white on almost clear. Flashes of pink on either side. Enamel on keratin. Some people twirl their hair, locks curling around slender fingers. At least that's silent. Not like bees or mosquitoes or flies. Always around, always unwanted. That's what it is, you know--unwanted. It could drive you insane. It could make you kill someone.

Burnt Blackened Grounds

Black coffee in a chipped mug. Bitter as the fall air. Like you in the end. It’s cold like your hand the last time I held it. Espresso—brown then black in an instant. This creation in duo little glasses; he lets it die. Burnt course grounds in the bottom of a cup. Gritty. Dirt—brown under the sun; black in this rain. Chestnut hair—a sea of it knotted and gnarled—saturated and dark. Brides in midnight gossamer veils.

White roses on wrought iron. I watch them wilt, wither, turn brown. I want them to blacken and burn. Burn like leaves on a cloudy Sunday. Burn away into ashes. White cylinders burn between my fingers one after another. Grime under broken bitten nails. Ash floats away—pummeled to pavement by tiny drops. Gray sidewalk darkened with water. Dirty-limp leaves clogging the gutter, and rain water pools. I want to be small, to sink in obsidian gutter ponds. No brown in my mug without cream. No black either now that dregs scratch down my throat.

Black soles raise me, carry me over the threshold, lead me to a barrier between me and the murderer. Fingers on the edge of cold stone, dark like volcanic rock. Never fell from the sky, cooling from red to black. Dense. Pulverizing anything in its landing zone. Coffee black. No room for cream. Dregs of the pot in the chipped mug. Cold metal on bare thighs. Oceans of people milling with black vinyl shields don’t know they’re already wet. They’re already water. Briny like the sea and circling the drain. Just like you in those last days. Like this coffee will when I leave it unconsumed.

I close my eyes and there I find black.

How Does Flying Work?

I rode on that nonexistent liquid that you see when outside and looking into quiet water. Well, you see its reflection- actually, you see a reflection of what’s on the other side of the see-through. No one ever actually sees this stuff. But somehow, that thinness makes complete black look like light blue. That’s why they call it “light” blue, because it float; it acts like fog, which is definitely wetter than the anti-viscous stuff I rode on. And like fog, the closer you get, the more it just seems to disappear. You can see it ahead of you, and after a while, it’s all the sudden behind you, but you swear you never passed through any of it; you still haven’t reached the stuff in front of you. At that point, it’s all around you but never near. Never close enough to touch-

How am I supposed to ride on what water reflects if I can’t see it and only barely feel it, anyway! And by barely, I mean only when it comes down in cones or when water can no longer be held up and so falls in a circular motion that some lamebrain decided to call “tropical” until it hits land. How’s that supposed to work? I can only feel it when it can cause damage? I can only see this stuff, this non-liquid (and most certainly non-solid), when it has potential to hurt me? And then, you still don’t see it, just the dirt it kicks up and the water that’s too heavy to ride like me and so falls.

I’m not sure any of that is worth it... I still don’t even understand how I can ride and water can’t. I mean, I love to ride, but next time I may keep my feet planted.

The Wall

Silence. The city dies into a murmur, a whimper. Names stare out at people, light grey or pink or yellow depending on the time of day. Men stare through the names, stare at the passersby. Children touch and draw back, surprised by the cold stone, surprised by the stares. Silence, and the names still looking, hundreds of markers for one dark stone.

Offerings are given to the names, left in memoriam, left with a murmur, a whimper. They are dark, the names are—dark and majestic and beautiful and horrifying. Shadows move in them, blurry, as if seen through tears. The names stare out at their friends, family, fans, feeling nothing, only staring.

Generations pass before the names, staring into them and wondering. They pass or remain in silence.

Red Mountains

It is broken in half, creating an imperfect split with two fleshy mountains rising high into the clouds: roughly two feet high. These peaks create borderlands between a concrete desert and a grassland jungle, whilst being split into by the red sea, and flanked to the south.

Everything is pleasantly situated, only three feet west of a grand fortress of dirt, led by companies of six legged myrmidons climbing down from their parapets and high walls to ford and to discover this new grand formation high above the world.

The mountains’ coloration remains a solid brown from the western side, but the eastern side reveals their secret; the shining red half, each red slope facing one another. A brave traveler could make it to the top and stare down at the gorge separating the two peaks, watching the red rivers flow into the deep bloody sea.

The real majesty of the red side were the caverns and pathways which led to grand secrets and great perils. Fliers would travel to the freshest caves, to lay down their children and wait for the caves to die away. True adventurers could travel in deep, discovering hidden pockets of digested food among acid laced tunnels.

Circumventing these formations leads to the discovery of more alien geometries. Long, leg branches to see across the perilous desert (with rubbery death traps flying faster than the speed of comprehension) and a giant face staring at any travelers approaching from the north. The face remains solemn, with an eternal grimace of pain and knowledge, bequeathing itself upon anyone who dares to face this behemoth.

It is upon this place that viewers can be encased in its natural beauty, and understand the lessons of life and death.

Light amidst Darkness

The brightness emanating from the stars threatens to swallow the darkness of space. The space is endless. It is filled with countless stars, which fill the space overlooking Space Station Fifty-Nine. The Station swims in an ocean of stars, light, and darkness. Endlessly, light hits the station like waves. The stars are bright, a beacon of inspiration in the darkness. Artificial light illuminates the inside of the station, and at night it seeps under doors into dark rooms. Light and dark are in constant battle. As the humans look into the abyss of space, they see stars grow dark, long after death. Next to this, they see the birth of stars, which emits a light so powerful that it is blinding. With no atmosphere in between the humans and raw creation, everything is visible.

Running Wild

Once upon a time, a girl named Christina Llarnd lived in a pattern. She rode the bus from her mother’s house to high school every week where she did what was asked of her and nothing more. When she arrived back at home, she carried on with life the way that most shy girls tend to do—nose buried in a book, hiding from the world. She helped her little brother with his homework and tried to explain why their father wouldn’t make it to soccer games like his friend, Bobby’s, did. One thing was for certain, Christina knew that life had to change, or she would explode.

One day, the scene outside of the boxlike window in Christina’s science class depicted a Utopia of sapphire blues, cotton-ball whites, and crimson leaves drifting through the crimson air. She saw this with an intense longing to run and be free of her studious handcuffs as she tunes out the drones of the monotonous teacher. She felt the blood pounding in her ears, and an impulse seized her body causing her to sprint from the room.

Christina ran down the halls and crashed through the nearest door. The breeze embraced her like an old friend. Away she frolicked so full of joy and redemption that not even the angels could have caught up with her.

During this inspirational flight, the muses brought an epiphany. “Life,” Christina surmised, “brings challenges as well as blessings. Dad might be gone. My brother might be sad, and I can feel helpless. However, Life is worth living to the fullest. So that’s what I’ll do.”

From that day on Christina stopped to feel the breeze on her cheeks and count her blessings daily. Never again did she allow herself to fall into the routine of depression.

Memories of Onions

It was a silly thing really. Nothing that was too complicated to understand. And yet as uncomplicated as it was, Melina longed to have the experience again. To feel the smooth, thin skin of an onion. To hold the balanced weight of the perfect knife in her hand – the metal glinting in the fluorescent light of the busy kitchen. Melina loved being in her kitchen, the scent of garlic and pepper stinging her nostrils with savory deliciousness. It was in the kitchen that Melina was happiest – chopping tomatoes, shredding cilantro, creating new and interesting dishes for her restaurant customers.

She dreamed of her little restaurant’s kitchen often. Cooking had been so much more than a hobby to her – it had been her only passion. Melina had always been a quiet woman, content to do nothing but grocery shop and cook, flipping through cookbooks at the end of the day. She’d never had much need to go out and meet people, and it was a shock to the few that knew her when she decided to move across the country and start a restaurant. Yet she’d blossomed in her new surroundings and her cooking took on a new meaning. No longer was she content to sit at home and cook for herself, she wanted to cook for other people, showing them the passion and joy that life had in food. Her restaurant did well, and food did for Melina what she could never do for herself – it gave her a purpose, a new sense of happiness, and for the first time in her life, real friends.

So Melina pondered on these things while she sat in her cold, gray cell and she wondered if everything had been worth it. The restaurant had meant everything to her, and she couldn’t stand for anyone else to have it. So she’d done her final act of cooking in a way – watching the flames lick the building as every last herb and vegetable was scorched in her beloved restaurant. It had been worth it at the time, and maybe it still was.

A Necessary Evil

Thomas had always been a patriotic guy. His family had a long history of veterans. War heroes, they were. His grandfather used to tell Thomas stories about his glory days by the fireplace, long after the sun had set over the snowy mountains.

Thomas’s father never approved; however, because he was a die-hard pacifist. He believed war was never the answer and that there were more important things in life. He told Thomas to read his books so that he could get the education he could not have. Thomas told his father that he wanted to join the army and that he did not want to become a lawyer. He was grounded for a month.

When Thomas was nine years old, grandpa Fred stopped coming around. It wasn’t until years later that he understood why. So he studied and got accepted into Law School, never forgetting his dream. His father died of a stroke when Thomas was twenty-four, and he joined the army without a second thought.

Thomas knew what war was all about. It was courage and duty. It was glory, and he was ready for it. It wasn’t until September eleventh, two thousand and one when he was given his orders. He was twenty-nine years old.

The military sent him to Afghanistan, near Kabul. Thomas loved everything about the experience. He loved the feel of his army camo against his skin, the weight of his gun in his hands, and the great responsibility that came with it. It wasn’t until the boy in the street that he questioned his purpose here.

The boy was innocent. He was walking down the street when the man grabbed him from behind, putting a rusty knife to his throat. His mother screamed. Thomas knew what to do, but he had never shot a man before. Never ended a life. The trigger was a heavy resistance against his finger. The sound was deafening.

He still had nightmares about that hot, dusty day in Kandahar. He married a girl named May and had a son. When the boy asked about war, Thomas told him it was a necessary evil. He told him that life was precious, that it was sacred. He told him never to forget these things.

Survival

We were setting a bear hang. Darkness was beginning to fall, and our rations were heaped directly below the oak tree that was our target. I noosed them together with one end of the bear-proof rope. Nikki handed me the other end – knotted around a fist-sized quartz rock – but the instructor shook her head and said Let someone else do it this time. We looked at each other, and I walked back to the edges of the canyon to stand with my fellow campers, all of them younger and frailer than me. Go, Javelin Princess, we encouraged Nikki. She smiled and let the rope slide through her fingers so that it swung at her ankles like a pendulum, gaining momentum until she let it fly, aiming to loop it around the overhanging branch.

I saw it happen before it did – I saw her take a step forward, saw her foot settle on the coiled rope – and I leapt forward to push her out of the way but I was seconds late. The rope reached the end of its slack and rocketed backwards, and the rock struck Nikki in the face with a vicious thwack; she stumbled back with her hands clutching her face, and then she crumpled to the ground just as I dove to catch her. Blood squeezed through her fingers – I pried her hands away from her face and saw that the quartz had shattered. Shards pierced the flesh around her eyebrows and one eye was already swollen shut; blood pooled beneath her lashes. There were yells from the campers and instructions from our leaders, but they faded under Nikki’s quiet whimpers.

Days went by, and we set bear hangs every night. The instructors and I were like hawks, hovering at the edges and keeping the girls safe. They did not chastise me for my assumed authority. I hiked at the head of the line, my hands empty so that I could catch the girls who fell or stumbled. Every night I struck the fire and they told stories of home, and I kept them quiet and happy better than the instructors could, because I was one of them. Nikki became my second-in-command, the white of her eye blood red, her brow bone stitched together, her lids stained purple. She struck an impressive figure: a symbol of stamina and courage, and we survived.

Frozen

Ryan, Matt, Bonnie, and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We were best friends by default of location and every spare minute we had or could finagle from our parents we spent adventuring. The Saturday morning we decided to play on the frozen pond next to our subdivision we were all nine years old. I remember the split of the ice and Matt disappearing and the confusion that followed how we yelled for him. He never came up and we all went home.

Things were never the same after that. The body was found and his parents moved away. Our adventures ended, and our own parents never questioned us about why we didn’t play with each other anymore. It was a tragedy. That was understood.

It was a small town, and we couldn’t avoid each other completely but we sure did try. As we grew older we fell into different groups, and after we graduated we all went away to college. I frequently ran into them, Matt usually just gave a slight nod of acknowledgement and Bonnie would smile but there were rarely words.

The first time we talked about it was at our ten year high school reunion. Sometime in the night we had all gravitated toward one another. After a few awkward moments of small talk, Bonnie suddenly blurted “Do you ever think about it?”

“All the time,” Ryan was quick to retort.

“Me too,“ Bonnie replied, “and what I still just can’t get my head to wrap around is why. . . we left?”

We couldn’t look at each other. In the silence, I thought of my own baby daughter who was asleep at my parent’s house.

“I think we were just so young and afraid,” I said finally.

“But what kind of excuse is that?”

Monday

It was Monday when the police found him. He had used his debit card to buy dinner. They took him back to the station, asked him questions, informed his parents. He was sullen and uncooperative, so they grounded him. His father lectured on the Ten Commandments. After a week, his mother grew worried. She couldn’t take many more nights of being woken by his nightmares. She got annoyed when he wouldn’t let her touch his head. She complained to his father, but his father didn’t want to listen anymore. When he finally cracked, he curled into a ball and cried for an hour. He confessed everything and his mother cried with him. His father refused to believe, but agreed to get him psychiatric help.

Dr. Malin’s dress suit made him nervous and her smile made bile clog his throat. She offered him a plush chaise, gave him Chamomile tea, commented on his Metallica shirt. Malin eased into the conversation. His speech was mercurial and broken. She was patient. He shyly presented the love letters. With a red pen, Malin underlined threats and coercive phrases. He mentioned the night after basketball practice, when the school was empty, and she had needed help getting something down from the double-cabinets in the teacher’s lounge. Malin squeezed his shoulder, told him that it wasn’t his fault. He admitted his arousal. Malin said he had done nothing wrong.

He was put in a support group, working with other teens and younger kids. His father filed the report himself and Dr. Malin testified at the trial. It took a month before he could smile again, and another before he could laugh. His confidence grew. In college, he met his future-wife who introduced him to his future-business partner. After three years, he got married. His mother cried while he said his vows. His father gave a speech at the reception. It was Monday when his first child was born.

Just Plain Unsweet

They sit on the leaves as if they are to be served, those acorns. So still in nature, hiding in their impressive shells impervious to the sweeping winds. Little sentinels of the soil maybe one day becoming guardians of the sky. How they inspire dread. Their dark brown color and smooth features only a guise to a passerby. It could be the alcohol, but every time a batch of acorns patters down the roof, I cringe. Chalkboards with nails or rubbing cotton together never compares to the horrifying clank on my car when I pass under those oaks to rehab. I chose to live here though; maybe it was because of that time, because of their bitter taste.

It was only my first hiking trek, and I tested it on the Appalachian Mountains in the fall. The weather was enthralling; the warm leaves swept away the brilliant blades of grass and the cool breeze shook my articles of clothing. Then I fell, straight down the side of the mountain, grey rocks now sparkled with red dew as I fell. I forgot, everything, I awoke to their almost childish gaze. The acorns. I waited, nothing happened, everything was new. I stayed, the acorns stayed. Things popped up shortly after: how to make fire and shelter, drink water, and hunger. One thing was always a mystery though, are acorns edible? Plenteous and easy to retrieve, of course I ate them. They were bitter and caused my stomach to churn, but I am weak.

Time passes, but the sting still lingers. I am making improvements, I don’t eat them anymore. Alcohol’s bitterness sustains me now, and they say maybe one day I will stop being bitter all together.

Fall

It was an accident, of course. She never wanted him to die; he was her husband. Peter adored Mirabelle, and their marriage was happy enough. It was just a little fall from a ladder. He’d been cleaning the gutters, and she’d been doing the dishes. Mirabelle saw it from the kitchen window—not Peter, but the red and gold leaves that fluttered after him. She finished the dishes before calling an ambulance.

Widow before a grave. Mirabelle’s tears are real enough, but not for the reason her in-laws assume. She cried from pure relief. There would be no children. It’d been far too early in their lives together for that, no growing old together, no more Sunday brunches with his parents. She prayed not for Peter’s soul, but instead thanked God for her freedom.

Months later a ship bore her across the ocean. She was luminous in the sunset, leaning against the railing. In her attire there wasn’t any black. Five days of sea salt air and champagne would do her good. Yet, Peter was always at the back of her mind. It agitated her to no end. Why was she burdened by his memory? She’d been a good wife. It’s not as if she killed him. His back broke in the fall. Mirabelle could have gotten help sooner, but the dishes wouldn’t wash themselves. It wouldn’t have made any difference, and Peter wouldn’t have wanted to spend his life as an invalid.

Really, she was quite compassionate; a good wife deserving of an extended vacation. But she enjoyed herself too much. With one less glass of wine she mightn’t have slipped off that balcony. She couldn’t live without him. That’s what everyone thought. So tragically romantic.

What a devoted wife.

Lost

Eden was with me when it happened, by the abandoned railroad station where Eden’s uncle lived. The alarms sounded first but were soon dwarfed by explosions far off. The ground rattled. I ran back home, saying goodbye to Eden. Rounding the street corner, I saw the bomb. A tiny missile, like a toy submarine, exploded, knocking me back several meters. One second, my parents were there, calling my name. The next? Well I can’t eat eggs or bacon anymore.

I haven’t seen Eden since. Maybe she got out alive, maybe not, but the next thing I knew, I was in a make shift hospital in one of the underground bunkers. The underage doctor said I was fine. After that, my older brother came to find me. He looked mad at first, but quickly changed his demeanor as people gathered around him. It took me a few weeks to understand why.

I’ve seen plenty of movies where a young man or woman takes care of their siblings, touching stuff. But then, war heroes never make good parents; even fake ones. Nathan’s idea of taking care of me was leaving me in his on-base apartment while he was on duty. Not just during the day, but during military operations he went on for months at a time…

But still, it was there, on that base, that I met Sarah. It was there we started dating. It was there that she convinced me to join the army. I guess it was there I became a man.

I could look back try to see all the good that came from tragedy. Out of night comes dawn. Why is Nathan dead too then? Why won’t Sarah return my calls? And why, god, of all things, does my every dream consist of finding a lost Eden?

Sidewalk

It was easy to see why Karen and Steven were very happy. They had a beautiful daughter and a wonderful home, and they lived in comfort and love. Even the monotonous moments of life seemed fervent with energy and joy. Their daughter Elizabeth grew and learned and was beautiful and life was beautiful for the family. Karen’s art was well received, and Steven continued to design houses.

The city around them grew and shrank as people came and went in their lives, but it was through their daughter that they found their closest friend.

The moment happened so fast. Elizabeth was riding her bike along the sidewalk, with Steven sitting in a lawn chair, watching her. She was finally off of training wheels. The bicycle’s wheel seemed to catch on something: a stick or a rock; no one was ever able to really tell. Elizabeth screamed as she lost control of her small bicycle, and Steven jumped up from his chair to rush to his daughter’s aid. The girl collapsed onto the street, just as a car sped down the lane, unknowingly taking the life of the child.

Karen and Steven died after that day. They found no happiness in life, nor did they find any sort of comfort with each other. Karen drifted away from Steven finally leaving the household, while Steven remained at home, always sitting in his lawn chair, watching the sidewalk, and replaying the scene over and over in his head.

Karen’s popularity in the art world died with her spirit, and Steven quit designing homes. In the end of all things, both became living mausoleums, encasing the once bright lives in drab grey bodies. Things never got better.

Bus Ride

It was an inauspicious Tuesday morning. I had forgotten to shave my left leg and unplug the iron, so I was on my way back to my apartment to unplug the iron and keep the building from burning down. I had to stand because the bus was crowded, and honestly all I could think about were the memos that would be on my desk by the time I got back to the office. Needless to say I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings.

To this day, I still don’t know what it was. It could have been anything, really—a stray dog, a garbage can, or some random kid on a bike—but whatever it was that found its way into the street that morning caused the bus driver to slam on the brakes. I lost my balance and promptly fell onto the guy beside me, snapping my wrist in the process.

The rest of that Tuesday was a blur, but nothing was ever the same. As the bus driver furiously tried to apologize for my misfortune, the man I had fallen on calmly hailed a cab that would take us to the emergency room. He told me jokes as we rode in the cab, and he stayed with me as my wrist was x-rayed and placed in a cast. He made sure I got home safely and asked for my number so he could check on me later. Phone calls turned to dinners, dinners turned to weekends spent watching movies or taking spur of the moment trips to the beach. Exactly a year after we met, he asked me to marry him as we rode the city bus. After all these years, I still make fun of him for being so sentimental, and he still jokes about the day I fell for him.

Post Traumatic

At the time of the attack, my little sister and I were playing in the garage with our dogs. My mother came to the door and called us in. She trembled just a little.

“Your father’s alright,” she kept saying. “He’s alright.”

There on the news was his work place, the Pentagon. In the side was a gaping hole—and in it: desks, chairs, rubble. My lungs turned to stone, my throat closed. The sorrow of hundreds of families I had never met was unbearably heavy on me as I thought of the grief my family had narrowly escaped. I studied my hands.

Even though my father was fine, the impression of doom clung to me like smoke after a fire. I jumped at the sound of a phone ringing, and listened hard to the side of conversation I could hear. Whenever someone told me there was bad news, I steeled myself for the worse. The terrorists had stopped for now, but the terror ate at my heart.

Over the years, I learned to push back the fear. You’re paranoid, I told myself. But still I would react with alarming speed to the smallest incidents. A word would set me off, and I would catch myself imagining the grief of a death in the family, or I would get wrapped up in a fantasy of planning a funeral. In desperation, I labeled my visions as a selfish desire to lead a more exciting life. You’re romanticizing death, I tell myself. It’s disgusting. Stop it.

Every time I left them, I wondered if this could be the last time. When I called on a daily basis, I pretended it was homesickness—but in truth I just wanted to know they were okay.

I can’t stop trembling.